The present invention relates to an apparatus for dispensing propagation pots, i.e., open-topped containers.
An apparatus of this type is shown and described in British Pat. No. 1505423.
Although this well-known apparatus works satisfactorily and is a definite technical advance in the horticultural industry, it does have some drawbacks. For example, the support strips in the reciprocable drawer are disproportionately long, because they must total the length of the support parts on which the pot stacks rest and the length of the separating ledge parts which when the drawer is pulled out separate the lowermost pots and take over the weight of the pot stacks. Thus, the support strips must be at least twice the length of one pot row of approx. 80 cm long. The strips are thus unstable in the lateral direction and have to be stiffened by means of transverse elements at the bottom of the front section of the drawer. However, this means that the support strips must be sufficiently high to carry the largest sized pots without the bottom of the pots coming into contract with the stiffening elements. Thus, when the smallest sized pots are dispensed they must drop for a short distance before they reach the recesses in the tray at the lower edge of the support strips. During their fall some pots may hit the recess lopsidedly or may be caught up thus causing delay in operation.
Another drawback with the known apparatus is the relatively long distance the drawer must travel each time it is required to separate pots. This is tiring for the operator and delays the separating operation.
The drawbacks mentioned above may partly be relieved by equipping the supporting strips in the longitudinal direction by elevationally displased pairs of support parts and separating ledge parts, which is a progress in preference to the known arrangement described in British Pat. No. 1505423 with only one row of separating ledge parts and one row of supporting parts separated from each other with an open space therebetween.
This arrangement allows the separating of pots in both directions of the reciprocable drawer, which again results in a reduction of the total length of the drawer and in the distance in which the reciprocable drawer has to be moved in and out.
French Pat. No. 2,183,556, describes a reciprocable drawer.
However, the problem regarding box-shaped pots was not solved by using the former construction of the support parts and the separating ledge parts. It should be mentioned that especially when dispensing the pots from the pot stacks the separated pots would have a tendency to lean over and to be pressed towards the walls of the other pots in the pot stacks in such way that the reciprocable drawer could not be removed.
As described on page 2, lines 121-129 in British Pat. No. 1505423, and attempt to solve the abovementioned problem was by arranging the support part and the separating ledge part spaced apart.
However, this solution was not useful for the new construction. Is was now found that by sloping down the end parts of the support parts and by allowing the support parts and the separating ledge parts to overlap each other, the problem of dispensing the pots without operation disturbances was solved in a quite satisfactorily way.
Another progress of the new construction is the continuous support strips in the longitudinal direction of the reciprocable drawer and the overlapping support parts and separating ledge parts on the same which involves a stiffening of the whole construction.